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Researchers from the microbiology and infectious disease service at Madrid’s Gregorio Marañón hospital found that reinfection with the new coronavirus in a woman originated in a strain other than SARS-CoV-2. The second infection was more severe than the first and the patient had to be hospitalized.
Although other cases of reinfection have been discovered in other hospitals, it is the first time that there is a reliable record that “two independent infections have occurred in the same person,” points out Darío García de Viedma, head of the discovery and researcher at the service of microbiology of Madrid Center.
The study focuses on the case of a woman who was infected in April and reinfection emerged four months later. The second infection was considered more serious, which led to her being hospitalized.
The Spanish team describes in the report the “complete epidemiological scenario related to reinfection”. Through the patient’s epidemiological environment, they were able to determine that the origin of the second infection was different from the first and that a reinfected patient also transmits the virus. There was still no evidence that reinfection by covid-19 could or could not transmit the virus to other people, the researchers point out, quoted by the newspaper “El Mundo”.
During the study, a sequence of the virus genome was reconstructed and in-depth epidemiological investigations were conducted which allowed the order of the entire transmission chain.
To prove that it is not reinfection, it is not enough to identify a patient who has been infected twice in different time periods “, it is necessary to demonstrate microbiologically that the SARS-CoV-2 strain that caused the reinfection is different from the one that caused the first episode of the disease, because cases of reactivation of the virus can occur, “explains Darío García de Viedma. “An alternative way to document reinfection has been proposed, by determining the strains circulating in the population at the time of each episode and demonstrating that the strain that caused the reinfection was not circulating in Madrid at the time of the first episode,” he says.
This type of research was only possible because the Microbiology and Infectious Diseases service has about 1000 SARS-CoV-2 samples already sequenced and representing the evolution of the pandemic. The samples are “a fundamental source of information both for the epidemiological study of the pandemic and for the determination of possible reinfections, as in this case”, he assures.
According to the National Multicenter Consortium Covid-Spain, which focuses on studying the genome of the virus, “50% of the cases currently circulating in Europe correspond to the 20A.EU1 variant”, reveals “El Mundo”. So far, 27 cases of reinfection with the new coronavirus are known worldwide.
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